Thoughts and Considerations on Internet Marketing

In todays somewhat volatile economic climate, most businesses should be looking at how they can cut costs and maximise bottom lines. Unfortunately, advertising seems to be one of the first areas of 'cost savings' that seem to be applied. I say 'unfortunately' because, in an increasingly competitive market with potentially fewer customers, advertising can be the difference between one company being awarded a contract for a job or of making a sale and another company missing out.

For companies reaching out to any set of 'connected' target clientele, advertising on the Internet is potentially by far the most sustainable and cost effective method of presenting your brand, products and services to a huge International audience.

Let's examine some of the more pertinent considerations of mounting any Internet driven marketing campaign.

Your website – the corner stone of getting your message out in front of your target clients.

Far too many companies build a website, often costing thousands of dollars, and sit back and expect the world to come knocking at their door. This is about as much good as spending the same amount of money on drafting a print advertising campaign and then never distributing the finished printed material !

For your website to really work for you, you need to address some fundamental considerations of the media on which it is presented. A clone of a glossy printed brochure as a website looks impressive but is sadly under-utilising the potential of the media platform. The internet is interactive, it has the potential to combine the aspects of print, television and face-to-face marketing techniques in one presentation format.

Some of the considerations that are often overlooked (in no particular order) are :

• Ensure your website reinforces your brand and company identity. Pay attention to colors and company messages and slogans.

• Make the pages attractive to the viewer, inviting them to at least explore the site further. If they aren't specifically looking for you at that moment, the impression you make to a 'surfer' may influence their future buying decisions.

• Use animated images rather than embedded videos or other objects; the intention is to have your site viewable by as many people as possible and not rely on a user having a particular feature installed on their computer.

• Ensure the website complies to the W3C standards of coding, this will ensure that it can be read by the largest number of cross platform users and search engines.

• Budget for amendments and additions to the website on a regular basis, a 'static' site will soon fall of the search engine radar.

• Ensure the site textual content is relevant to the product or message you are trying to get across, textual content is key to getting your site found by potential customers.

• Ensure your website is suitably 'transparent', few customers will want to do business with you if they feel they cannot pick up a phone or have no idea what your address is.

At this juncture, you may be gazing at your shiny new website, proudly displayed on your office computer, and feel you have achieved your goal of creating your web advertising presence.

Surely all those potential customers will be falling over themselves to fill your email inbox and jam the phone lines with orders!

Regrettably, nothing could be further from the truth.

If you are to maximise the potential of all the hard work you have just put in, this is where you need to start driving visitors to your website and start the sales process. It can take many months for search engines to start to list your site under the search criteria your potential customers use, but some hard work, and a small investment at this stage, can dramatically reduce the gap between publishing your website and getting it found by your customers.

Some examples of how to maximise the value of your website might include:

• Analyse the search phrases and words your customers have used to find your site and be sensitive to internationalization and how a customer might try and find your product if they do not have a command of your language.

• Drive people to your site by having links and advertisements placed in website specialising in trade and directory listings.

• Include your website address in any print advertising.

Web Advertising can be a very effective method of driving potential clients to your site, but, to be both cost and target effective, you need to carefully examine where that advertising might end up !

The scattergun approach of placing your advertisement with an 'ad' server may well get your message out millions of times, but it may also display them on wholly inappropriate pages – do you really want your services possibly advertised on a porn site ?

I made the point above of saying 'to your site'. There are several good reasons why it is preferential to link to a website rather than attempting to get a sale directly from your web advertisement.

• The advertisement would, in most cases, need to be overly complex, and therefore expensive, to convey any direct sales information.

• The search engines will link the potential client to the website on which the advertisement has been placed, after which the impact of your advertisement will determine if the client eventually clicks through to your site.

• The advertisement will almost certainly be competing with many other disparate and unrelated advertisements for the same screen 'real estate'

Advertising on directory listings or trade directory sites will ensure that your advertisement is placed appropriately and is far more controlable. You should attempt to reinforce the brand recognition of your presence in a listing by buying logo or banner space high up on the same page.

Some directory and trade listing sites will offer additional services such as feedback forms that will go straight to your inbox, and these can be an effective method for initiating contact with your client.

Putting it all together can be a daunting proposition. As a summery, you may like to consider the following :

• Few website designers (or someones young nephew, who will 'do' a site on the cheap) have any experience in internet marketing. They may design beautiful web sites but the benefits of the site are all too often lost since non of your customers ever gets to see it.

• Few Search Engine Optimisation companies are interested in the long term sustainability of your search results.

• Few 'ad' server companies have any interest in the demographics of where your advertisement is displayed, some will give you a limited control which is time consuming and often difficult to configure.

• Most directory listings and trade directory sites will take the trouble to work with you to maximise your advertising investment (if they don't, avoid them !)

• Do at least make the effort to talk to a consultant specialising in Internet Advertising who can put your Internet presence, and the considerations thereof, into the broader context of your overall advertising budget.

• The investment you make at the initial planning stage can save you thousands of dollars in implementation and re-implementation after you realise that what you have isn't working for you or conflicts with the broader advertising or brand recognition campaign.

• Trying to form a sustainable and effective web presence 'on the cheap' is often a waste of money, time and resources – if you think hiring a professional is expensive, just wait till you find out what a series of amateurs are costing you !

• Try and find consultants that are sensitive to your products and target markets. It would be unfair and probably a costly mistake, for example, to contract a far eastern consultant to address the nuance and psychology of a target clientele in North America and the UK.

• Take the time to define your objectives and targets before rushing out and contracting any design or advertising. If you are unclear as to what you should be thinking about, use a consultant to help you rationalise all the different aspects and considerations into some logical format that will enable you to better assess the proposals and ideas that are being thrown at you.

• Do ensure that all the components of your web presence are in your own name. Many cheap domain names are in fact 'leased' and some, less than ethical designers, webmasters or hosting companies will set up your domain name and hosting services in their own name effectively 'locking' you in to them and preventing you from moving or controlling the content of your site and may even use this to , what can only be described as, blackmail you, or hold you to ransom.

• Do pay special attention to the copyright and Intellectual Property rites of any content you display on your site. Many designers ignore this altogether and it is you that will suffer the penalties of any resulting litigation.

• Do ensure you comply with all the legislation as required by your country of operation. Just because you have your website designed and hosted in the UK and your company is registered in Spain; it doesn't absolve you or your website from the Spanish legislative requirements.

• There are no 'magic bullets' in web site design and web advertising ! A successful campaign of a web site and web advertising must encompass many facets and considerations. Beware of anyone who guarantees results - they are rarely going to be sustainable and may even use less than ethical, or even illegal, means to achieve their objectives.

Technology Services RPVW S.L.

11^th October 2008